Journal Prompts for the Fearless
Fears. We all have them, and we all have to face them sooner or later.
Some people are plagued by fears that interfere with living. Others dance around their fears, cleverly avoiding those things that give them a nervous twitch. Still more people simply live day to day with minor, almost meaningless, fears that are a source of mild irritation.
But how often do we sit down and ask ourselves: what am I truly afraid of? And why?
Today’s journal prompts might not get you over your fears, but it will certainly make you more aware of them and how they might be benefiting you or holding you back.
Fear and Courage
It’s important to note that fears are vast and numerous. Some fears seem rather silly, such as fear of little, tiny spiders. Others are somewhat reasonable – like fear of war or death. And there are many more fears in between – fears that are rational, irrational, dangerous, or helpful.
You could boil all fears down into two types: those that protect us and those that inhibit us.
The fears that protects us keep us safe from danger. When you’re walking alone on a dark street and hear a rustle in some nearby bushes, your fear might prompt you to cross to the other side of the street. Fears like this keep us safe, so we should heed them and keep them intact.
But the other fears – the ones that inhibit us – those are the ones that we can work on eliminating. We can identify them, analyze them, and finally, dismiss them and move past with a brave smile – the smile of victory.
Journal Prompts
Today’s journal prompts ask you to sit down and examine your fears. You don’t need to face them — yet. You just need to identify them and ask yourself a few questions about why you’ve adopted them and how they affect your life and your goals.
This exercise might make you a little nervous, depending on how deep your fears run, and how willing you are to dig within yourself to unearth the littlest or greatest of your fears.
- What are five things that make you nervous or uncomfortable?
- What is it about each of those five things that bothers you?
- Where does this discomfort come from?
- Write down one thing that truly terrifies you. Is it keeping you safe or preventing you from living the life you want?
- How likely is it that this thing will happen?
- Why are you so frightened of this thing?
- If this thing happened, what would happen next?
Try to put on a brave face as you work through these journal prompts. Good luck, and keep on writing!
Got any ideas for journal prompts? Post them in the comments!
I agree with all points
I turn green when I can’t add a RSS feed on a blog I like
I’m still working on figuring out the point with the content adding to stumbleupon and others, but I will manage to get to the right spot in my CSS one day without killing my whole site layout (which needs revamping anyway…..)
And I have the same feeling towards the word “Meme” – *grin*
I arrive at this blog via EntreCard and have subscribed to your feed as I like the content and your writing style.
So you could say #1 & #6 are doing well for you.
I cannot stand having to register and login before I can make a comment, I usually skip leaving comment even if I have some thoughts to share.
I would like to add that a contact form is also essential to a blog for readers/author communication.
@Elver, That’s scary!
@Lightening, Thanks very much for subscribing!
@Michele, I guess we all have words that rub us the wrong way. I’m getting over the whole meme thing, so we’ll see… I find it interesting that it doesn’t pass the WordPress spell check. Then again, the word “WordPress” doesn’t pass either…
@Nicole, Yep, providing an RSS feed is one of the first things a blogger should add to their site. That’s why I love Feedburner!
@betshopboy, EntreCard is very cool. I’m new to it, and enjoying it very much, though it can be pretty distracting. If a blog requires registration in order to comment, I run for the hills. That’s no way to treat readers. As if we didn’t have enough IDs and passwords… Contact form, very useful. I agree.
Great post!!
Seven Brilliant Blog Essentials although I haven’t achieved all of them and I’ve been at it for months. One I know is holding me back is the keywords and descriptions for each post. I have the plugin but need to go back over my archives to meta tag them all. Not to mention adding those post tags.
I’m still waiting for that google page rank. Your new domain is brand new and ranked 4 already. HOW DO YOU DO IT!?!
Now, what IS EntreCard??? I’ve never heard of it but WOW it sounds impressive. In the comments of this thread alone you have new readers from there. *goes on a hunt for more information and wonders why you didn’t link it up from the post*
Oh, and I LOVE the Notify me link. Can’t stand comment RSS because it’s an information overload but I can read and delete emails very quickly or choose to respond. If they don’t have a notify me option I probably won’t remember to check back for replies.